Episode 97 - Illness Can Be The Wake-Up Call That Changes Your Life

The world is louder and more chaotic than ever, and that noise makes it easy to miss the message hiding inside our hardest moments. We start with something simple but real: how falling out of routine after Passover can mess with your body, your mood, and your judgement. From there, we move into a bigger question that sits under so many health scares and emotional crashes. What if the disruption is not just bad luck, but a signal you’re meant to read?

We talk about illness as a wake-up call and why health hits differently than money stress, work setbacks, or relationship tension, drawing on lessons from Iyov (Job). I share a story from a men’s trip to Israel that shows how even successful, accomplished people can feel spiritually stuck until the right teacher helps everything click. That leads to one of the most practical takeaways of the conversation: find the right rabbi and learn the truth in a clear, grounded way so you can stop repeating the same cycles.

We also explore “measure for measure” and how challenges can point you toward the area that needs repair, including finances, emunah, and tzedakah. We connect body, soul, and mental health through a Torah lens, and we get specific about guarding your eyes and ears in a culture full of distractions and unqualified voices. If you want a Jewish podcast conversation about trust, spiritual growth, purpose, and building a life that feels aligned from the inside out, this one is for you. Subscribe, share it with someone who needs strength, and leave a review with the line that hit you most.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

The trust factor is a ticket to a bell of life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the mind.

unknown 0:21

Trust factor.

Illness As A Divine Message

The Israel Trip That Opened Eyes

Measure For Measure In Daily Life

Body Soul And Mental Health

Guarding Eyes Ears And Attention

Teaching To Grow And Week Wrap

SPEAKER_00 0:22

The world is louder and more chaotic than ever. That's why clarity and truth have never been more important. Welcome to the Trust Factor Podcast. Good morning, everybody. Welcome. It's Friday on the Trust Factor Podcast. Now, I don't know about you guys. Normally they go in a blink of an eye, but this week, for some reason, I don't know why, and it's been a long time. This week took a while. And it might just be the fact that we're taking our time getting back into routine, which is not easy. When you fall out of routine because of holidays like Passover, sometimes it takes a little time to get back into it, and that can throw off your entire system. For me, I know it certainly did. We're also overdoing it with the food, and it wreaks havoc on our system. So you take the fact that we're overindulging, that we're eating matzah, which we haven't eaten in a long time, and it definitely slows down the digestive system for so many people, right? And you add to that the fact that we're out of our routine and it's a recipe for disaster. Takes a while to recover. This year, I guess it took a little while longer for me. I hope your recovery was that much easier. We are talking about illness. Illness as a stick in the hand of your creator. It's a powerful tool, whether it's physical or emotional, mental illness. It is a powerful, not just a powerful, the book told us yesterday, it is the most powerful tool in God's hand to be able to send us messages. Why? Because what we learned from Eelve, from Job, is that you can hit a person and knock them down over and over and over again when it comes to all kinds of areas in their life, whether it's their relationships, whether it's their finances, whatever that situation is, as long as it's not his health, he can bounce back with relative ease. When you hit somebody's health, that is oftentimes or always the tool that can be used to break that individual. And yeah, sometimes people need to be broken. Look, you've got guys who walk around this world 60, 70, 80 years living in La La Land, living in a fantasy. Everything around them doesn't make sense. Things fall apart, they can't make a good decision, and yet they can be shown the absolute truth, the clarity of Hashem's Torah, the divinity in it, the fact that there's no way that it could have come from any human being. And still they lived a corrupt life. They still can't make basic change. They can't grow. Some people need to be shaken. Some people need to be stirred. A lot of people, yeah, there are a lot of people who you can speak to them, give them 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour, and they're on board. They're all in, they're dialed in, you could see it in their eyes. The wheels are turning, they're absorbing what you're giving to them. It makes sense. One plus one equals two. How come nobody ever told me that? You know how many times that's happened to me? I remember vividly taking a trip of young men, not young men, I mean, maybe we're in relative terms with young men, but guys in their 30s and 40s, and we went to Israel on a men's trip. And I was one of the Madruchim, I was one of the people who was leading the trip, along with a couple other very talented individuals. And by the end of the trip, I had grown men following me around as if they were drinking from a well that I was carrying. And I was thinking to myself, this is the first time I ever had such an experience. Full-grown Jewish men who are well accomplished in their fields, doctors and accountants and lawyers, and they're following me around and asking me questions and are enamored. They're blown away by the answers that they're given. They don't understand. How is it possible that I'm a 35, 40, 45-year-old Jew, very well accomplished and achieved a lot of success and greatness, married children, the whole nine yards. I've been a Jew my whole life. I went to Hebrew school as a kid, and this is the first time I'm hearing these things? This is the first time somebody's ever been able to make sense of all the things that the rabbis and the families and have been telling me? Why? And the truth is, it's unfortunate, but a lot of it is hidden. And we need to make efforts to uncover it. And sometimes making those efforts means just finding the right person. That's why I'm often telling you if you don't have a rabbi, find the rabbi. It's critical. If I didn't find my rabbi, I wouldn't be where I am today. Very simple. My rabbi opened up my eyes and gave me life. Otherwise, I was living, but I was really not alive. I was going to work, paying the bills, being a good member of society, paying my fair share, working overtime and super hard to support all the systems around me, right? Doing all the things that society expected of me. Was I happy? Different story. But I wasn't fulfilled. I certainly wasn't fulfilled, not having the knowledge that there's more to life than eating, sleeping, working, and repeating. That's what most people do. They spend a lifetime going through those motions and they have nothing to show for it at the end, or they regret all of the missed opportunities for growth. So you've got to find the rabbi. And that rabbi is going to show you exactly what you need to do to start living, to start making good choices. Not all teachers are created equal, not all rabbis are created equal. Find yourself your rabbi and you will learn the truth in a proper form from the right individual. And that will allow you to start living your life properly. For those people who aren't doing that, it's a perpetual cycle of mistakes after mistakes, and those mistakes keep getting bigger and they keep becoming more and more costlier. Let's get back into the book, my friends. The creator runs the world measure for measure. Midah, connected me da. I've told you this many times. What's the connection back to my health? What's the connection between what goes around comes around to the fact that now, God forbid, I'm diagnosed with some illness that I have to now focus all of my attention and efforts on. And it's very simple. He sends us illnesses that are specifically designed to tell you where to look. What have you done? What's the problem? Because we said a tribulation is a wake-up call. It's a tap on the shoulder. It's a love tap. Time to pay attention, my son. You're going the wrong way. Wake up, open up your eyes, do an assessment, stop repeating. The same thing. By the way, I'm guilty of the very same thing. I'll be the first to admit it. God comes over, taps us on the shoulder, and oftentimes we don't see it. We just don't have eyes to see it. Sometimes we do. The trick is to have eyes to see it more than we miss it. That's how you come out more successful. So bottom line is he sends us problems. If some, for example, you don't have enough money. God keeps money from you, he holds back. What's the problem? The problem is you're not managing your money properly. Maybe you're not giving enough tstaka. Maybe you lack emuna when it comes to money. You're terrified. You really, maybe theoretically you think that you know that the money's coming from your creator. But in practice, when time comes to put your hand in your pocket and pull out that money, it's very difficult for you. I know there are a lot of people in the world who have difficulties. They're challenged greatly in this department, especially when the economy is difficult, especially when it's very expensive to live a Jewish lifestyle and every dollar counts. So I get that. But at the same time, I show you people who live in the same situations and yet they have no problem parting with their money. They've overcome that inclination. So if God's sending you challenges that have to do with monetary problems, look at your finances and see what's holding you back because it's in your hands, right? If there's a physical ailment like we've just been talking about, it also indicates that a person might have transgressed using certain parts of the body that correspond to Hashem's commandments, to the mitzvahs. People don't understand. There was a book written, I don't remember when it was, but it may have even been King Solomon who had a book that actually showed you which parts of the body are connected to which mitzvahs. So that if you were having a problem, if you were sick, let's say, God forbid you had kidney stones, right? So you would know based on this book that the kidneys are directly connected back to ex mitzvah. This specific mitzvah. And if you had kidney problems or any other form of kidneys, problems, you were on dialysis or whatever, and you wanted to fix it, you didn't need doctors. You just focused on that mitzvah. You made sure that you perfected it. And the more that you perfected that mitzvah, the better you became, the more healed your kidneys became. There was a book as such, and apparently today it no longer exists. But at one point in time, and I think it could have been King Solomon's, we had access to that information to say, if you're challenged in this part of your body, look at these specific mitzvahs. Today we don't have that, which means that we can only look generally speaking. And the book says, for example, somebody who has a head ailment, whatever the ailment is that resides in an individual's head, and that could even be emotional problems, is obvious. You forget who your creator is. Your creator is the head of the world. He runs the world. And therefore, your head represents that. That's why we say on Rosh Hashanah that we should be like the head and not like the tail, right? Because who's the head? He's like Hashem. We should need to be, we need to be godlike. We need to be emulating him. So that's the idea. And that's why also it applies to emotional health, because our souls, which is our godly component, we have a material component, an animalistic component, we have a godly component. The animalistic is the body, and the godly is the soul. Where does that soul reside? In the head. So if you don't know who your creator is and you're not living a life according to his commandments, oftentimes we've said you're suppressing your spiritual growth, which is your godly growth. That's 90% of who you are, 98%. Without your soul, you don't function. Without certain elements of your body, you can still function. You can still be a very functional, contributing member of society if you don't have a leg or you don't have an arm or you're missing some other limb. You can still contribute to society. You can have a complete life and live a long, healthy lifestyle. But if your soul is gone, you're dead. You don't function. It's not a little bit or a lot of. It's either it's there or it's not. And if you neglect it, then you're introduced to this concept called mental illness. That's where it comes from. I'll say this clearly so everybody understands so that there's no confusion. All mental illness comes from a lack of spiritual growth, from neglecting your nishama, your soul. It is your operating system. You could have the nicest hardware in the world, you can have top-of-the-line hardware to run your network. But if the software inside is corrupt with a little bug, the whole thing is rendered useless. It's the same idea. You could go to the gym, you could eat well, you could go to the top universities, you can get the best education, you can have the best job, you can have a wonderful wife who takes care of the family, and you can have wonderful children who treat you with respect and appreciate you. But at the end of the day, if your operating system is corrupt, your life is nothing but problems, nothing but challenges, difficulties. That's when you suddenly are introduced to mental illness and you don't know why. Where did this come from? Yesterday I was perfectly fine. Yesterday I didn't have any of these thoughts. Yesterday I was perfectly able to get up and do all these wonderful things, and today I can't. What changed? What changed was you got to a point where there was ultimately enough neglect of your nishama, of your soul, and then you paid the consequence. Now it's reversible, like I said yesterday. It's reversible. That's the good news. 100% reversible. You can do it, and you can do it in record time. Just as quickly as it came on from one day to the next, it can also go. Trust me, like I said, I've been there. An eye ailment can stem from looking at forbidden sights such as pornography or looking at another person's wife. When your eyes are everywhere but where they should be, then suddenly you wonder, why am I having such challenges with my eyesight? Well, all of a sudden, like almost overnight again. One day I can see well and the next I can't. Right? There's obvious situations where eyesight slowly and gradually deteriorates. But generally speaking, if you have an acute issue with your eyes that comes on suddenly, then you should start to think, maybe I need to be more careful with where I'm looking. Ear problems, that's an obvious one. Refusing to listen. Who are you listening to? You're supposed to be listening to Hashem's commandments. Maybe you're too busy listening to Mark Kearney. Maybe you're too busy listening to government officials. Maybe you're too busy listening to other individuals who are telling you what to do when they themselves are falling apart. Their lives can't be held together with the greatest glue in the world. And yet they're busy dishing out all of this advice to people. That's so common today, by the way, my friends. So many people have zero qualifications. In fact, their lives indicate that the last thing that they should be doing is dishing out life coaching techniques. And yet, somehow everybody's a life coach, right? It's no coincidence that therapists are the ones who usually need therapy the most, right? Oftentimes, therapy is the same thing. A lot of people who have emotional problems start to find some goodness and some healing and coping mechanisms, and suddenly they want to change the world because they don't want other people to be in the same situation where they were, which is great. But one of the ways of doing that, also helping them to become stronger, because the teachers learn more from their students than they learn from themselves, is learning how to treat people. So if I learn how to treat other people's mental illnesses, then I will be that much more capable of treating my own mental illness. You understand? It's like this podcast. When I learn to give over a podcast, then I learn more than you're learning. When I'm giving it over to you, I benefit more than you do, believe it or not. You might think I'm the one teaching, but I'm doing more of the learning. It's the same idea because I'm preparing for it. I need to go to deeper levels. It's not enough to just fly over my head or just learn it temporarily and move on. I need to really soak it up so that I can give it over properly. And it's the same with every discipline. The more you prepare, the more you learn, the more you teach, the more you grow. That's it. So it's the same idea. If I want to become better, and if I want to become more emotionally healthy, then I'll teach people how to be more emotionally healthy. We'll leave it over here for today and for the week. It's a new month. Today's the last day of Nissan. I hope you maximized your Passover. I'm sure that you did. And God willing, we will see the fruits of all of our efforts that we spent over the month of Nissan will come and stand by us for the rest of the year. Have an amazing Shabbat and have an amazing weekend. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts, drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.